The Mule

by David Quantick

  He really was raving mad, and I was stuck with him. In a court, Frant’s actions would in all probability be defensible with a plea of insanity, whereas I was someone who, although a complete idiot and a gullible fool, was apparently in my right mind when I acted as Frant’s accomplice. It was not a comforting scenario.

  ‘I need a drink,’ I said. ‘I’m going downstairs.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Frant said.

  ‘Hide in plain sight, remember?’ I said and stood up. Something fell from my pocket. It was the notebook. I reached down for it, but Frant had already picked it up.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, opening it. ‘A diary?’

  ‘That’s mine,’ I said. ‘Please hand it over.’

  ‘Carrie and the Legions,’ Frant read out. ‘I should have known you were a fan of rock music.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I lied. ‘I can’t get enough of it. Please give me my notebook back.’

  ‘Really, at your age,’ sniffed Frant. ‘But then I suppose nobody grows out of anything these days.’

  He handed me back the notebook and went into the bathroom. I was about to put it back in my pocket when it occurred to me that I might not get an opportunity to look at it again for some time, as being on the lam offers few chances for reading. I opened it at the review I’d read last and turned to the next page. To my surprise, this wasn’t a review at all, but an interview between ‘C’, whom I assumed to be Carrie, and ‘Q’, obviously an anonymous interviewer. It looked quite long, too. I folded the corner of the page to mark it and got

  up.

  ‘I’m going to the bar,’ I shouted at the bathroom door, and went downstairs.

  Q: I’m here with Carrie, singer with Carrie and the Legions. It’s just Carrie, right?

  C: Right. I have other names but I’d rather not divulge them here.

  Q: OK. Is that because of the hostile reviews of your last album?

  C: Ha ha! I certainly did cop a lot of flak for that one, didn’t I? But I think there were some brave choices on that record. I was striving for a new direction and I know some people think I failed, but I consider it a worthwhile experiment.

  Q: Will you be working with Henry J again?

  C: Wow, you really cut to the chase, don’t you? I have no plans to work with any one particular individual right now. Henry is busy on other projects, anyway.

  Q: Do you feel that Henry J was the wrong person to collaborate with?

  C: Henry’s a great guy. The stories you hear about him are true, ha ha, in that he is something of a perfectionist and if he wants something and you don’t, he will probably end up getting his own way.

  Q: Is that what happened to you? Because the hand of Henry J is all over Showtime?.

  C: And that’s what I wanted on that particular record. I was happy to put myself in his hands. But now I feel it’s time to move on.

  Q: Do you regret working with Henry J?

  C: Like I said, I feel it’s time to move on.

  I was starting to make sense of the notebook. This was obviously an interview conducted in the wake of Carrie and the Legions’ record Showtime? which had not been a success. The interviewer was suggesting, as far as I could tell, that the failure of Showtime? was the fault of Carrie’s collaborator, the record producer Henry J. Reading between the lines, it was clear that Henry J was a man with a forceful personality, and he had imposed this personality on Carrie’s record with negative consequences. I wondered if Carrie was telling the whole truth when she said that she had been happy to put herself in his hands. I knew next to nothing about her but I was sure that she was the kind of woman who surely found it difficult to surrender her independence to anyone, and in fact would go to great lengths not to do so. So I wondered what circumstances would have led her to let someone take over the reins. Money, I imagined, although from the reviews Carrie seemed to be a person of great integrity. Nevertheless, as I knew from the music papers my ex-girlfriend had been so fond of, integrity was something that people in the pop and rock industry were giving up every day. It was, I was aware, a cut-throat industry.

  Frant still hadn’t made an appearance, so I took a chance and read on.

  Q: I’m sorry, I only have a couple more questions.

  C: That’s fine. I hope you’re going to ask me about the new stuff. That’s the thing about you guys – it’s all about raking over the past. You never want to know what people are going to do next.

  Q: As it happens, that was my very next question. Now that you’ve severed your ties with Henry J—

  C: You had to get him in one more time, didn’t you?

  Q: What are your plans for the future?

  C: OK. Well, my immediate plans are to take a break, think about stuff, search for a new label, and record my new songs. At the moment, you could say I’m working with a blank slate and that’s how I like it. It’s time to move onwards and upwards.

  Q: ‘New songs’. Can you give us a hint of what these songs are and how they might sound?

  C: All I can say right now is I’m feeling optimistic. I’ve got some great ideas and I have to say that I’ve got a feeling that the next record is going to be the one. This could really work out for me, you know?

  And there the interview ended. I turned the page, and it was blank. The next page was blank too, and the next one after that. I flicked through the notebook, and it was all blank. The interview I’d just read was the last piece in the notebook. I found that I felt a little depressed. As well as being the nearest I had to evidence of Carrie (if that was her name)’s existence, I had also become involved in her narrative. But at least I had more information now. I knew the name of her collaborator – the egotistical Mr J – and of one of her recordings. I could go online and perhaps find out more.

  ‘Daydreaming again?’ said a voice and I looked up to see Frant standing over me, a sardonic expression on his face. I realised that my dislike of the man had increased even more in the last few hours, and once again I wondered how it was that I had ended up shackled to this appalling lunatic as though we were in some nightmarish three-legged race.

  I put the notebook away.

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ I said, barely restraining the sarcasm in my voice.

  ‘Of course,’ said Frant. ‘There is a man I know with whom we can go and stay.’

  ‘Is that safe?’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Frant again. ‘He has friends who will be able to get us out of the country undetected. Once we are in the United States, we will be able to return to a state of equilibrium and sort out this whole unfortunate business.’

  ‘The United States?’ I said, and then, because I couldn’t help myself, ‘Of America?’

  ‘Of – yes,’ said Frant, managing to avoid starting a sentence with ‘of course’ for a third time. ‘Europe is not safe, what with extradition treaties and so forth. Besides, there is a much more sympathetic attitude to the whole Von Fremdenplatz issue there.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Even though you have assaulted a senior French academic—’

  ‘Senior, my foot,’ said Frant. ‘The man was nothing more than a glorified caretaker.’

  ‘And stolen some rare documents, you think you can not only get away with it, but also escape to the United States and everything will be forgotten?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frant, ‘I do.’

  I looked at him with amazement and dislike. ‘They’ve got our faces on CCTV,’ I said. ‘You filled out an application form. They have our names and our addresses.’

  ‘No,’ said Frant, ‘they don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean, they don’t?’

  Now it was Frant’s turn to give me a look. ‘Do you seriously think that if I had put down who we really were that we would have been admitted to the institute?’

  I felt a chill. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean this. You are a hack translator, a middleman between an author and his public. You had the key to the Von Fremdenplatz in your hand a
nd you were unable to recognise it. That scarcely qualifies you to examine a parking ticket, let alone one of the most important documents of all time.’

  I let the insult go. It could join all the others at the back of my mind. ‘But what about you?’ I said. ‘Your entire life has been devoted to the pursuit of this … kind of thing. If anyone is qualified to examine a made-up document in a pretend language, then surely it’s you.’

  Frant nodded. ‘You are right, despite the sarcasm. However, while I am perfectly placed to decipher the Von Fremdenplatz, I am not welcome in the halls of academe. I do not have a fancy degree from the Sorbonne. I have never sat at the high table at Oxford or Cambridge. I do not publish incomprehensible, dull papers. I am a writer, I am a creator, I am an artist.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, before he could go on to say that he had studied at the school of hard knocks and the university of life. ‘So how did we get in to see the Von Fremdenplatz?’

  ‘I forged our credentials,’ said Frant.

  ‘You what?’ I said.

  ‘One of the advantages of working with the literature of the fantastic is that you develop a certain facility for creating convincing alternatives to reality,’ said Frant.

  ‘You mean you know how to make things up and make them look real?’ I said.

  ‘There is no point creating a work of parallel history or a volume of alternative literature if it looks like you just bought it off Amazon,’ said Frant. ‘Had, for example, your doltish publisher seen fit to publish my Chrona the way I wanted, I would have insisted that it resemble exactly a fourteenth-century almanac, in agedness, paper quality and even smell.’

  This made sense. Walker-Hebborn was reluctant enough to commission full-colour covers for his paperbacks so I could hardly see him agreeing to forge a medieval manuscript on authentic parchment with, presumably, manure rubbed into it.

  ‘And compared to recreating a pre-Industrial Revolution document,’ continued Frant, ‘forging a couple of references is a piece of cake.’

  ‘But they had our names on,’ I said.

  ‘Did they now?’ said Frant, eyebrows aslant with wryness.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘you gave us false names.’

  ‘You are Mr Panza,’ said Frant, ‘after the rustic simpleton sidekick of Don Quixote. And I am Mr Loki, after the Norse trickster god. Appropriate, do you not think?’

  ‘You applied to see the documents under the names of Mr Panza and Mr Loki?’ I said. ‘We sound like a music-hall act.’

  ‘It worked, didn’t it?’ said Frant. ‘And now you see that our dilemma is lessened. They may have our descriptions, but they do not know our names. Doubtless the police are looking for us, and checking recent arrivals to Paris, but there must be plenty of people matching our description to sift through. Hence the comparative safety of this hotel.’

  I looked at Frant’s fedora, scarf and eyebrows and doubted that there was anyone matching his description. ‘So all that hiding in plain sight bit was nonsense?’ I said. ‘They never even knew we were here in the first place.’

  ‘I just wanted to get back to the hotel and rest,’ said Frant.

  I got up and walked around for a bit. I was processing far too much information, none of it particularly good. True, the French police didn’t know who we were, but surely it wouldn’t take them long to find out. And I was now on the run under a false name. Things hadn’t really changed.

  ‘How are we going to get out of the country, though?’ I said.

  ‘Leave that to my friend,’ said Frant. ‘He has some experience of … moving that which is not intended to be moved.’

  ‘Please don’t say he’s going to smuggle us out of the country,’ I said.

  ‘Very well,’ said Frant. ‘Although that is exactly what he is going to do.’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘We both have valid passports. Why can’t we just go home? We can find ourselves good lawyers and sort this out.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Frant, ‘After all, as you well know, I am the one who committed the assault. As you said, they have me on camera. As for you …’

  Frant sat down next to me.

  ‘As for you,’ he said, ‘you can’t go back, can you? Not when you’re the principal suspect in a murder enquiry.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I stared at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

  ‘People always say that,’ said Frant. ‘“It wasn’t me.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “You can’t lay that on me.” Well, in this instance, my dear Sancho Panza, you know exactly what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Please don’t call me Sancho Panza,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It wasn’t the greatest piece of detective work,’ said Frant. ‘I first became suspicious when, after refusing ill-manneredly to accompany me to Paris, you then called back within the hour having had a complete change of heart in the matter.’

  ‘And so you thought, Oh, I get it, he’s clearly on the run from a murder charge?’

  ‘No,’ said Frant. ‘As I said, I merely became suspicious. But my suspicions were confirmed when I read this.’

  He took out a crumpled copy of a free newspaper, the kind that are doled out to commuters by the kilo during rush hour. I expected to see my face plastered all over the front page. Instead, Frant opened the paper to an inside page. ‘Murder investigation continues,’ he read flatly. ‘A new suspect has been announced in the blah blah blah … then it’s a description of you, and your relationship to this girl … oh, here it is … The suspect is known to have in his possession a notebook belonging to the missing girl.’

  He showed me the newspaper. There was a small, out-of-date photograph of me next to the article, which they must have got from my mother, or possibly my ex-girlfriend.

  ‘It was the notebook, you see,’ said Frant. ‘You were so secretive about it and I couldn’t see why. And then I read this article, and it all fell into place.’

  ‘I imagine it helped that they printed my name and my photograph,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frant stolidly, ‘but the notebook was, as they say, the clincher.’ He took the newspaper back. ‘So,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell me everything.’

  * * *

  I told him everything. I wish I could have said that it was a weight off my mind. That’s what criminals say, I believe, when they confess. But I’m not a criminal, I suppose, so it wasn’t a confession. Anyway, I started at the beginning, in the bar, with the girl, and went all the way up to the police arriving at my apartment. I left out one or two details, like the fact that there were photographs of the girl in the book, and the fact that she had come back to my apartment and then fled into the night. I had so little dignity left, I was keen to preserve some shreds of it.

  As I told my edited story, Frant nodded as though wise throughout.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you thought it best not to tell me that I was going abroad with a wanted man? Thereby putting my mission in jeopardy?’

  I refrained from pointing out that I was at least an innocent wanted man, while he was guilty of actual crimes, like theft, and hitting a man over the head with a bust. But I didn’t. I was fed up of the whole thing. I just wanted to hand myself in to the police and get it over with. Again, I didn’t say this to Frant as I was sure he would see things somewhat differently.

  ‘This changes nothing,’ Frant said. ‘Angry though I am at your deceitfulness, we still have to carry on.’

  ‘Can’t you just leave me here?’ I said. ‘You would surely travel lighter alone.’ Now I was talking like him.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Frant. ‘If you fell into the hands of the police, you’d crumple like an autumn leaf. No, I must needs keep you by my side.’

  ‘All right then,’ I said, thinking that once we were on the move, I could still give him the slip. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Good,’ said Frant. ‘You settle our bill, I’ll keep an eye out for the police.’r />
  I stood up, but Frant put his hand on my sleeve.

  ‘I’d like to see that notebook, please,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because obviously this girl is key to everything,’ said Frant. ‘She is the person from whom everything devolves. She has the translated Alice – all of it, not just a few copied pages. Did you not think to try to track her down?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ I said. ‘But she has vanished. That’s what “disappeared” means. It means “gone”. And she hardly left many clues. All I have is those pages of the Alice and that notebook, which is just reviews of rock concerts.’

  I passed him the notebook and he flicked through it. He looked disappointed, as though he had expected to find the girl’s name and address at the back. Frant handed it back to me, and immediately I felt relieved. The notebook was after all my only real link to the girl.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Frant suddenly. He was looking at the hotel lobby. A police car was parked outside on the pavement. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘Plain sight,’ said Frant. ‘Follow me.’

  And he got up and walked out. I followed him. Frant turned right, away from the police car, and walked down the street, casual as anything. By the time the police would have entered the hotel and summoned the desk clerk, we were two blocks away.

  ‘And we haven’t paid,’ I said to Frant.

  ‘I think we have more important things to worry about,’ Frant said. ‘Taxi!’ he added loudly, and a cab pulled over.

  * * *

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Frant, ‘that you have mishandled everything.’

  The taxi was stuck in a parody of Parisian traffic, surrounded by honking static vehicles. It smelled of cigarettes and an unidentifiable foodstuff.

  ‘Please explain,’ I said tightly.

  ‘Your first action should have been to ask the girl where she got the book,’ said Frant. ‘Then you should have ascertained her name and telephone number. After that, when she disappeared, you should have gone straight to the police, told them everything, and given them the notebook.’